


The Witch-Twins

by BeastOfTheSea



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Cannibalism, Gen, Gore, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Sadism, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-16
Updated: 2012-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-14 09:42:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/513894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeastOfTheSea/pseuds/BeastOfTheSea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the first, they were set apart from others. (The origins of Jane and Alec of the Volturi.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Witch-Twins

**Author's Note:**

> This is NOT COMPLIANT with Stephenie Meyer’s official birth-year for Jane and Alec. That was an unintentional error, but one I wouldn’t even have mentioned if not for another issue – the sentence reading “Some said they had foreigner blood in them, and maybe they did” originally read “Some said they were part Gypsy, and maybe they were”, but, as it turns out, the word “Gypsy” didn’t make it into English until centuries after this story takes place. So, ah, let it be known that I meant to hint that Jane and Alec (and probably their mother as well) were ambiguously non-white, rather than just non-English. *bah*
> 
> **Disclaimer:** I own absolutely nothing in Twilight.

From the first, they were set apart from others.

Their mother lived on the outskirts of the village, well outside the boundaries of where the good folk lived; when they were very young, they liked to pretend that their hut was a castle and all the villagers their serfs. No villagers could ever give royalty the looks they gave them, though, or say the things they did about them… to their faces, at least.

Some said they had foreigner blood in them, and maybe they did; they possessed a certain dark beauty that the coarse-featured, rough-bodied locals did not. Others said the father they never knew – and never missed – was a devil, and maybe he was; they lacked any respect for the church or their elders. Whatever the truth, they did not care. It had no bearing upon them, and thus didn’t matter.

The villagers knew their mother to be a witch, and both hated and needed her; she alone understood how to treat the cows when they took ill, what to give a child in the grips of fever and delirium, and which herbs might lessen an old man’s pain. Darker things she knew, too: how to rid oneself of unwanted spawn, how to render an enemy infertile, and how to make a rival suffer a slow, lingering illness before an excruciating death. The same herbs that cured ailments in moderation could kill in excess, and tiny amounts of poison could do one good, she told them, and they listened in rapt fascination.

But their mother was not just a hedge-picker – her well-honed knowledge was backed by fragments of the true gift, which no amount of learning could grant. They, too, had signs of it: when Alec had lain hands on a boy who had broken his arm with a bad tumble from a tree, the boy had soon stopped crying and passed into a peaceful sleep, and when Jane had been chased by a group of jeering village whelps, she had given them one sharp look and they had stumbled over each other and collapsed in a tangled heap, all swearing later that a bee had stung one, or that another had suddenly stepped on a sharp stone, or that yet another had gotten a violent stomachache at exactly the wrong moment – or some other silly excuse for their oafish clumsiness. Their mother showed great pride in them for these signs, but warned them never to use it too much, lest the ignorant and petty villagers be roused to sudden overwhelming violence by some imagined – or not-so-imagined – slight.

She passed away from horrible growths when they were ten, her herbs and cunning useless against the corruption of her body; they buried her themselves, the villagers refusing to allow them to bury a suspected witch in hallowed ground, and set about living their lives alone. They supported themselves as their mother had, as the new witches of the village, and though they lacked her knowledge, they were good enough. As she had taught them, they captured rats, hares, squirrels, and other small animals (though never the two-legged sort) and experimented upon them, attempting to rediscover whatever of her knowledge she had not managed to tell them; the villagers looked askance at them when they caught glimpses of the twins’ activities, but Alec, hauling some stunned animal back to their hut for Jane to use as her subject, only gave them flat, disinterested looks in return.

When not working, they ran wild, dancing into the woods, spying through holes in ill-kept huts, and mocking the village priest; he made wild gestures at them, shook crosses in their faces, and pronounced dreadful curses upon them if they did not reform their ways. They laughed. Waving around mystic symbols? Conducting rituals in which he chanted gobbledygook that could have been as meaningless as the babbling of a child that had not yet learned to speak, for all they knew or cared? Promising them an eternity of pain if they crossed him? The twisted old man was the true witch, not they.

Quick-fingered and quick-witted, they found ways to obtain whatever they liked; by the time they were eleven, they found themselves bored with the village, and wondering what life might be like at court. There was always room for fresh witches at court, it was rumored, even though they burned or beheaded any witches who got caught. But those were the ones foolish enough to get caught. They dreamt of glittering jewels and gleaming swords, of magnificent steeds and maleficent nobles, of two children from a muddy little village, through whom they chose to serve, steering the course of the entire kingdom…

So, when the rich traveler passed through the area and asked them pleasantly if two such lovely children knew of some place where he might stay the night, they eagerly offered him their own humble hospitality, such as it was. When he accepted, they did not need to look at each other to know both their hearts felt the same smug satisfaction; while he slept, they would see if he carried anything in his coin-purse worth taking before they set out for court (such as a map that might tell them how to get there), and if not, they would at least inquire as to what he knew about court, what the journey there was like, and so on and so forth.

Before they went to bed that night, the traveler asked them how they had known he was rich, since his clothes were simple and their condition was poor, and insisted in a most charming way that he wanted only their honest opinions, not a shred of sycophancy – he had endeavored to disguise his true nature, but obviously had done a far poorer job than he thought, and wished to know where he had gone wrong. The twins glanced at each other, then explained his face alone had betrayed him: the whiteness of his skin had told them that he spent hardly a moment outside, either a noble’s privilege or an invalid’s necessity, and the smoothness and radiance of his skin marked him as certainly not an invalid. The man was intrigued by this answer, and thanked them for their honesty. With that, they retired for the night, and, when the twins were certain he lay dead to the world, they began their search.

But the man’s hand shot out and caught Jane’s wrist in a crushing grip as she reached for his coin-purse; as the twins cried out in unison, the man sat up, unperturbed, and asked them affably if they had truly thought him such a fool. He released Jane, chuckling, and began to tell his story.

He was a sorcerer, as they would understand it, he said, searching for apprentices. In order to avoid suspicion, he had disguised himself as an humble traveler – an effort that had obviously failed – and gone from town to town, seeking those with some vestige of talent; though he had not expected it when he came to rest for the night at their hut, they quite sufficed. However, it was against the sorcerer’s code – and there could be absolutely no exceptions – to take children on as apprentices, so he could not carry them off from this miserable place and give them the lives they were owed until a few more years had passed. When those years passed, however, he _would_ return to claim them.

Jane, impatient as always, asked why he could not take them anyway – if not as apprentices quite yet, as servants until the proper time. The traveler only smiled and said that would be the wisest course – save that the devils with which he dealt were prone to forget their orders when distracted, and _always_ hungry.

Alec, unimpressed, asked for proof that he was such a mighty sorcerer, and not just a charlatan with a strong grip and sharp hearing. Cocking an eyebrow and showing his teeth slightly, the traveler responded by reciting countless random facts about them – the tooth Jane had knocked out when she was seven, the mud bath Alec had taken when he was four – and meticulously detailed recollections of things only they would have known.

The terrified twins had begged him to stop, acknowledging his power, and swore to serve him when he might deem them of age. The traveler seemed delighted by this, saying that it was such a pleasure to have _willing_ servants for a change; what he meant, they did not know, nor did they wish to ask. The next morning, he took his leave. The twins were glad to see him go. They counted themselves lucky that he had done them no harm; the villagers, who never had the chance to see the sorcerer, but did have one young man go permanently missing in his wake, might not have been so lucky.

The years passed, during which the twins did little but twiddle their thumbs as they waited. Did he still remember them? They wondered. How long would they have to await his return? They were already thirteen – surely old enough? Though a stranger might not have known from their outward appearances, their bodies had already begun to change, and they no longer considered themselves _children_. He had to come for them, they assured each other. They knew he would.  
  
But it was not the traveler that came for them, but the Great Plague.

They themselves did not contract it, but the villagers did, and as the death toll mounted, so did the fear and hatred of the still-living. This plague must have been sent to their good, God-fearing village because of those devilish brats, the new priest insisted, far younger and far madder than his dead mentor; perhaps it was even their doing! Everyone knew they trafficked with the Devil… a black cat cast its baleful glare upon any visitor that approached, and their foul herbs were the stuff of soothsaying and sorcery. And his congregation chorused back their own accusations: they had seen the boy hanging about their sty before a pig took ill… they had suffered nightmarish dreams after arguing with the girl… their children and spouses had died, yet these brats remained in good health…

All rot, though the villagers loved to hear it.

The cat ensured no rats came within a fair distance of their hut and invited itself into their home when the weather was poor, and that was all. What little loyalty – if any – it owed to them came from their rescuing it from a bored and vicious pack of village youths when it first arrived in the area, nothing more. As for its ‘baleful stare’ – they could not have been sure, but it was older than it appeared upon first glance, and it might just have been going blind in its old age.

As for the herbs, that was so ridiculous it did not merit a response (and what was not absurd was likely true, besides), and the idiots flattered themselves if they thought the twins would bother to secretly curse them. Had some oaf earned their disapproval, he would have had no doubt of it.

And they most certainly had never trafficked with the Devil – if he even existed in the first place, his punctuality was grotesquely overrated. In boredom, they had sought him out, not out of desire for power but just to say they’d seen him, and he had not appeared; one year, they had even gone out on Walpurgis Night, whooping and running about and calling upon him ‘til dawn, but they had not gotten so much as a puff of smoke or flicker of unholy light for their trouble.

Finally, they were not mad enough to call such calamity upon the village. They would never have done such a thing, even if they had the power, no matter what the provocation. Spiteful they were, yes, and possessed of very little attachment to their birthplace indeed. But they never would have done this. And no just god, no matter how cruel, would have punished a village for their existence and yet left them untouched.

The villagers would not let them get a word in edgewise, however, and closed their ears to all attempts at reason; they wanted scapegoats for what had befallen them, and who better than the twins? Like a swarm of locusts, they swept down upon the twins, and nothing the twins did could help them.

Yes, they kicked and screamed; yes, they called in favors and begged for the villagers to remember all they had done for them, and all they might do; yes, all who carried Jane complained of searing pains, and all who carried Alec cursed their leaden limbs. It was to no avail. If one could not hold them any longer, another took his place. If one was moved by their pleas, he was angrily shoved aside by his fellows. If they had hoped the women and children would be kinder, they had been terribly wrong: the women spat at them as they passed and screamed gleefully that they’d burn in hell, and the children whooped and danced around, hollering, “ _Burn the witches! Burn the witches!_ ”

As the ropes bound them to the stakes, Alec squeezed his eyes shut and prayed for a last-minute reprieve; Jane shrieked that all of them would suffer for what they’d done, and their madness and wanton cruelty would be paid back to them tenfold. “Are you cursing us, witch?” rang out the voice of a woman from the mob.

“Yes!” screamed Jane, her face flushed with fury. “From the youngest to the oldest of you, from the greatest to the least, I curse you, curse you, curse you, and I hope you are all well repaid for what you –”

Then the fires were lit, and her screams of rage became only screams.

Let it be quick, Alec begged inside his mind as he writhed in the flames, let it be fast, and making it stop hurting, stop the pain, it hurts, have mercy on Jane if not me, have mercy on me if not Jane, it hurts, IT HURTS –

I want them to suffer, Jane cried inside her head, I want them to feel this pain a hundred times over, I want them to suffer for what they’ve done to Alec and me, I want them to _suffer_ –

As the flames consumed them, they suddenly heard the villagers’ jeers turn into shrieks, and shortly thereafter the sizzle of some liquid hitting the fires, and felt something being used to beat the flames out; stone-like hands tore away their bonds and rescued them from the blaze, and, the moment they were free of the fires, teeth like an animal’s sank into their flesh – and it was as if the fire had devoured every part of them at once.

Hell was the twins’ first thought, independently; independently, they dismissed it sometime later in the agony. Where were the devils? Where was the final judgment? Surely a vengeful god would have invited them to their own damnations… Something had happened. More than that, neither could think coherently through the pain, but they knew the burning had not gone as planned.

If the Devil has taken me as his own, Jane reflected sourly, I could do without the welcome. Alec appealed to any power, heavenly or infernal, that might be listening to tell him _why_ this was happening, if they refused to end it, so he could at least understand his punishment.

At last, there began to arrive some relief from the pain; at first, it came only faintly and briefly, like a cruel parody of mercy, relieving the pain just enough that its return seemed to amplify it a hundred times over, but then slowly grew more steady and stable. It was not so much a release from pain as a loss of all sensation – and even as Jane thought it, she knew it was absurd, since pain had long ago become the only sensation – but it nearly drove both twins to weeping nonetheless. Alec, his throat raw from screaming, took a deep breath and sighed in relief, slipping into a grey ocean (or so he supposed it was like, from the tales they’d heard – they had never seen the ocean) of nothingness. If this was true death – no otherworld, no heaven, no hell, just oblivion – he found he didn’t mind.

Two things at last awoke them from the calming nothingness: first, their awareness that the pain had stopped – second, their discovery that they were overwhelmingly hungry, and something just beyond where they lay smelled delicious beyond description.

“A most _marvelous_ gift,” they heard a cheery voice comment as the grey haze slipped away. “Why, I myself was nearly unconscious before I realized what was happening and vacated the area.”

Their recognition of the voice nagged at them, but they found one thing far more important. Had they thought they were hungry? They had not the faintest idea of what hunger _was_. The world was excruciatingly bright and detailed, the sounds around them unbelievably rich and textured, the scents exquisitely nuanced and intense – and the purpose all these things served was to make them capable of understanding their _hunger_. They would fain have torn apart the hut around them and devoured it utterly, had its walls beat with vivid red blood. They would tunnel into the earth to find beasts to eat, they would leap into the sky to bring down the birds, they –

All these thoughts took but a moment, and were interrupted by two already-bleeding meals being thrown at their feet. Instantly, the twins tore into their respective prey, and all conscious thought dissolved in a river of glorious slaughter.

Some while later, the twins raised their heads, temporarily sated, and each glanced at their blood-soaked companion. Jane was the first to recognize her partner in bloodlust. “ _Alec_?” she asked, staring at the crimson-eyed, gore-smeared being to her right, who blinked back at her with an equally dumbstruck expression.

“ _Jane_?”

“It would seem that both of you have returned to being thinking beings,” the cheerful voice from before said, and both their heads jerked around to find none other than the sorcerer. “In that case, I think both of you are due an explanation.”

Most of what he had told them before was the truth, though he had taken a few liberties. He was not precisely a sorcerer, but rather a vampire – blood-drinking undead gifted with preternatural power. In fact, he was one of the three sovereigns who ruled over all vampires in Europe, maintaining order and concealing their existence from their human prey,

At this, Jane and Alec should have balked, but did not; they felt a strange lack of care towards humankind, and indeed found themselves associating “humans” with the ravaged meat before them, rather than their own selves. Any further feeling they attempted to summon up was immediately quenched by the memory of the flames – the hunting of humans seemed not a bad idea at all.

In order to keep his hold on power, the vampire continued, he was obliged to seek out talented vampires to add to his former guard – and those humans who would make excellent vampires. Here Alec and Jane perked up, listening closely.

Yes, said the vampire affectionately, humans such as themselves. When he had stumbled upon them, diamonds in the rough, as he passed through the village, he had been ecstatic; the transformation into vampires gifted even unexceptional humans powerful abilities and heightened the talents of the already-gifted tenfold – or, depending upon how one measured them, a thousandfold. He himself, as a human, had possessed a knack for gleaning a thousand details about a man the moment they brushed bare forearms, or about a woman the instant he took her hand – and now, a touch was all he required to know _everything_ , down to the earliest memories and the most minor of details, about a person, for good or ill.

Jane remembered the vampire’s hand around her wrist, and shuddered.

As for them, the vampire continued, flashing a brief smile at Jane, such fine children as they had been could not fail to make superb vampires – but they had been _children_ , and he himself had created the law against vampire children. Those turned into vampires as children were beautiful, charming, willful… and completely mad. Some essential component of their beings had not yet stabilized, and without it, they never returned to sanity.

“Returned?” Alec asked.

What an observant young man. Yes, all vampires changed less than a year prior – the so-called ‘newborns’ – behaved as little more than starving animals, exhibiting only enough intelligence to hunt down the next meal. The two of them were holding up admirably well; however, it remained to be seen whether that was a consequence of their talents or the result of being freshly gorged.

Vampire children, however, never left that state. They lashed out at their dearest friends and loved ones as fiercely as they might at a mortal foe, they acted without any comprehension of consequences beyond the immediate, and they had no thought, no personality, beyond the whim of the moment. Worse yet, those around them would not attempt to restrain them, but rather aid and abet them, charmed by their childish ‘innocence and whimsy’. The purge had been necessary, but unspeakably difficult; perfectly sensible vampires had fought to the death to protect vampire children, even going so far as to frame themselves for their wards’ crimes and willingly submit to their own executions to hide the children’s existence. Staring into their wide, guileless red eyes, even he had struggled to carry out the deed… but he had known, as no other vampire could see, the utter derangement of their vacant minds, and, sobbing, done what had been required to ensure the safety of his kind.

So it had been impossible to change them then, much as it would have been convenient. Instead, he had chosen to wait several years, until they were full-grown and he could change them with complete assurance that nothing would go wrong.

Unfortunately, then the plague had struck. Upon hearing of it, he had rushed through the dying country, seeking out their village, and hoping it was not too late – Luckily for him, they had not succumbed to the sickness. Unluckily for both him and them, he had only arrived in time to witness…

He had no need to finish the sentence.

Seized by overwhelming panic, he had acted with vampiric speed: stampeding to the front of the crowd, he had seized the nearest villager and torn him apart, using his blood to douse the flames; when that had not worked, he had ripped apart another, adding her blood, and began to beat out the remaining flames with a third. Jane and Alec knew they should have been horrified by his matter-of-fact recounting of the carnage, but, with their strange new apathy towards human suffering, the only thing that perturbed them was the wasteful usage of all that perfectly good blood. Jane wished she had been able to tear the treacherous villagers apart herself.

The villagers had attempted to assault him, but were helpless to harm him; no mere human, or no mere crowd of humans, could hope to damage a vampire. Fire was the only tool they had, at present, that stood a chance of doing that… and he had made certain to stay clear of the flames until they had been all but extinguished. Even so, he said, extending his hands and letting Alec and Jane see the still-healing blackened stone flesh, that little had scorched him…

However, the survival of such a promising young woman and young man had been worth it. Once he had pulled them from the flames, he had torn into their flesh, biting him everywhere that he could to fill them with venom – a vampire’s lifeblood, a terrible poison that, in great enough quantities, did not kill its victim, but rather granted him – or her, as the case might be, he added with a smile at Jane – rebirth. Like the flame of a phoenix – would they not say so?

Quickly realizing from their perplexed expressions that they had no idea what a phoenix was, the vampire said that he would explain later, then continued.

Unfortunately, the transformation _burned_ as terribly as that flame; that had been the source of the agony they had felt, stretching over three days of indescribable torment. Yes, he said, his lips curling into a sad smile, he knew that it had seemed closer to three thousand years – he remembered his own transformation all too well, he was afraid. But ah, when they came into their own! Then, they would realize that it was but a meager price.

 In fact, he continued, if anything, they had experienced an unusually merciful turning; not at first, to be sure, he added in response to Jane and Alec’s disbelieving expressions. That had been the torture at its ordinary potency – perhaps extraordinary, as they had suffered grievous wounds even before their infusion with venom, and the regeneration of the flesh would not have been gentle. However, as venom endowed them with its unique godhead, one or both of their abilities had manifested, acting as a powerful anesthesia upon all beings within range, including himself…

More? They wished to know more? Ah… but he did not know more, as of yet. That was where the tale ended – at the moment. Oh, he was quite looking forward to continuing it, but that would come later… For the moment, it must need rest… he had a present for them.

Turning and striding to the entrance of the hut, he looked over his shoulder, quirking one eyebrow as he smiled, and beckoned them onwards. Obediently, they arose and came forth, their bare feet kicking aside the carcasses of their prey as they went; what awaited them, when they arrived outside, was undiluted, unspeakable hor–

No. A landscape of mouth-watering beauty. A banquet. A feast.

Crows feasted upon the bodies of children and adults alike; disembodied limbs littered the ground, a hand here and a leg there, with the occasional torso present to add variety to please the eye. Looking at them, Jane thought of how she’d always imagined the meals of fat, spoiled nobles, spilling rich wines everywhere and letting great globs of food slop onto the floor, exclaiming through mouthfuls of the finest dishes that they could waste all they liked, that they could always, in their infinite wealth, have more… She thought that such was now _her_ perverse birthright, and smiled.

Alec looked about, his face expressionless as he surveyed the carnage; he knew he should have felt something about so much death, so much savagery and monstrous destruction, a massacre of innocents… Yet he could bring himself to feel nothing more than a delightful, decadent _hunger_ at the sight of all that blood. His gaze landed upon the two burnt pillars of wood, sticking out from the middle of the village, and he recoiled – then broke out in an angelic smile. What innocents? There had been no innocents in this village. From the oldest to the youngest – and if the youngest had done nothing, it had been because their little bodies and undeveloped minds kept them from participating, not because they wouldn’t have joined in if it had been within their power to do so.

The vampire took the twins by the shoulders and steered them onwards; as they walked, they noticed that the carrion-birds and sniffling rats, who were always so shameless and fearless in their eternal hunger, took to the air or, squealing, scurried away from their food rather than suffer an undead presence. As well they should, the twins thought, savoring the graceful lightness of their own steps and the easy power they felt in each swing of their limbs. In that respect, at least – considering the twins’ own former insolence and incaution, two years past, around the one who would now be their master – the beasts of the field and air had more wisdom than humans.

The vampire came smoothly to a stop, and pressed lightly on the far sides of their respective skulls, nudging them to look forward; they involuntarily snarled up at him in unison, overcome by a spike of irritation, then ducked their heads in shame in unison as well, and indeed faced forward. “No need for embarrassment,” the vampire murmured soothingly. “ _All_ newborns are short-tempered. But come, now; does the sight before you not place you in a better mood?”

They had hardly heard, their gazes fixed on their ‘present’. Until now, they had mistaken the mouth-watering scent of blood in the air as coming from the corpses scattered about, but now knew better – concentrating, they could tell the rancid, stale stink of old and clotted blood from the delicious, potent smell of the fresh, and wondered they could have ever confused the two. No, the prey before them were quite alive… terrified, stinking of having soiled themselves, and close to death in several cases, but alive – for now.

They surely would have fled, but their bound – or broken – limbs prevented them from escaping; a few, annoyingly, were praying for salvation from witches and demons, but it would do them no more good than any madman’s fevered raving. For their continued stupidity and blindness alone, in fact, they doubly deserved death. Alec’s prayers for rescue from the flames and the pain had been answered, as well as Jane’s that the villagers should be well repaid for what they had done – if there truly was a higher power that hated injustice and came to the aid of the weak, had it not been made obvious which side it had taken?

A child, face twisted in agony and face red and swollen with weeping, cried, “No, no, no-”

“The time to say _that_ , brat, was when your elders were dragging us off to be murdered,” said Alec. Jane, meanwhile, looked into the eyes of the young village priest, who stared at the three undead in terror, all his righteousness and fire gone without worshippers to command and weaklings to attack – and she smiled.

The vampire clapped them both on the shoulders. “A fine present, wouldn’t you say, dear twins?” he asked. “Our kind must never leave witnesses – of the human variety, of course – alive. I am afraid these _unfortunate_ folk must be disposed of before we leave this area… Properly heaping up the corpses and allowing for decay to provide its concealing effects, we can arrange the aftermath to look as if it was nothing more than another village wiped off the face of the earth by the plague.” He chuckled. “Ah, but I am quite aware  you are young, and my discussion of details bores you… especially since, despite your recent meal, you are newborns, and already grow hungry.” Chuckling again, he stepped back, pushing them ever-so-slightly forward. “And so –”

“Dear Jesu, sweet Jesu, have mercy –”

“As you had mercy upon us?” Alec said coldly to the woman who had interrupted, while Jane sneered a similar comment to a man whose bruised face dripped with blood and tears.

“-I give them over to you,” the vampire finished, as if nothing had been spoken.

Had the twins still been human, even after what had occurred, they might have paused and asked him whether a few might be spared; they might have asked if it was truly necessary to wipe out an entire village in a spree of wanton cruelty. They might have asked whether it only lowered themselves to the level of these ignorant brutes who had persecuted them; they might, even consumed utterly by fury and vengeance, balked at the sight of a village woman clutching her child to her breast, or an old man cowering, his legs bent in unnatural places at unnatural angles, and holding up his frail, sticklike arms in a feeble attempt to ward off death…

But they were no longer human, and they did not hesitate even for an instant.

“This is your revenge for your bodies and blood, dear twins –” the vampire called after them even as they lunged, “ _Take and eat!_ ”


End file.
